3:06pm August 1, 2014

“We are used to ignoring our own bodies. “These carrots are too spicy” we complained as a child, only to be told no, they were sweet, that the music wasn’t too loud, nobody can hear lights, what you are experiencing is invalid. We heard: you are invalid. You do not experience the world the same way as everyone else, and therefore, your experience is wrong. You learn to ignore the ever-present pain because nothing can be done about it, but then you have a kidney infection and others get mad at you for not noticing sooner. But why should you trust your body when it is always wrong?”

—

“Scarred”, Kate, Thinking Person’s Guide To Autism (via tiptoetothetardis)

I posted the following response on the original blog (it’s a response to the entire post, not just to this part), and I’m reposting it here:

This is so much my experience.

And it’s made worse by the online bullying that some of you know I’ve been through. Those are some of the same people who caused the scars to begin with, back to join the fun. Because to them, I was a toy, and I got away, and toys are belongings, your belongings are not supposed to get away from you. So as revenge they follow me around the Internet spreading gossip and rumor littered with just enough half-truths to make it believable.

But as for the rest of it…

Yes, I am scarred. Only in my late twenties and early thirties have I stopped being, to other people, what one person called “the broken baby bird”. The poor unfortunate who must be either squished or rescued, but never seen as an equal.

But something I never knew, all those years…

I may be scarred, I may be fragile, I may be broken, on some levels.

But there’s another level where nothing evil can touch. And that level is a source of strength that any of us can tap into, if we can only find it. And that has been there all along, protecting us, keeping us alive through things that should have killed us. And nothing and nobody that wishes us harm will ever be able to see or understand this part of us. Because it is beautiful, it is whole, it is complete, and it is who we are for real.

Each one of us is our own person, each one of us just a little different from the last. Each one of us is a beautiful moving sculpture that exists on a level that bullies can’t even dream of. We ourselves can’t even see it, much of the time, but it is always there, it is always a part of us, it is always THE part of us that matters the most. And the more we can tap into it, the more we will feel better and do better at what we need to be doing. (Which may be different from what we want to be doing.)

That said, there are people who will push you to be ‘recovered’ or 'healed’ in ways that you just aren’t. And aren’t ready to be, aren’t willing to be, and that’s fine. Anyone who pushes you in that direction when you just can’t do it, doesn’t know you well at all. And I see a lot of people trying to push everyone to recover because an unrecovered traumatized person makes everyone uneasy. I remember people trying to force me to be something I couldn’t be, for a long time, and that wasn’t okay.

But I also remember working really hard for a really long time, and one day waking up and realizing I wasn’t suicidal anymore, which I had used to be every minute of every day until it was a fight to survive. And then somehow in my mid to late twenties things started changing. Even during the worst of the cyberstalking, it felt like I was being forged into something stronger, and as time went on, I became able to take actual delight in life, instead of constant rage and terror as the only emotions I could feel. Things got better, and I know some of it was the constant work I was doing, but I can’t explain all of it. I just know that at one point in my life I was broken and that’s all that I could see myself ever being, and at this point in my life, life is something I love and cherish and I enjoy it so much it’s hard to remember how bad it was before. It feels like it’s gotten to a point where the bullies of the world can touch me less and less. And I can dig deep into the beautiful parts of the world more and more.

I wish I had advice on how to get here from there, because nobody deserves to suffer for things we didn’t even create. I mean, autistic people didn’t ask to be born into a world that despises us and bullies us and treats us like garbage. And we don’t deserve to suffer for being born into that world. But we do suffer.

The only advice I can come up with is… everyone, somewhere, has a connection to the deep parts of the world, whether we know it or not, or can find it or not right now. And the more you cultivate that connection, the stronger you will be. In my case, I connect to that part of the world best through my sensing-based memories of the redwood forest I was born into. For everyone else it may be something different, unique to them. Whatever it is for you – memory or recent, feeling or something tangible – hold onto it. Because it’s the deep parts of the world that will sustain you when everything else seems to be spinning out of control.

And those parts of the world will help you grow and change into the person you were meant to be, whoever that is. And there is a person you’re meant to be. And you are that person already, right now. But you’re also becoming that person, every day. And that’s something beautiful, and that’s something that’s always there, whether you can see it or not. And that’s as important as the fact that we are scarred and damaged. We are also resilient and beautiful.